


Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

by FanfictionForYou



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Badass!Danny, F/M, Jackson Swings Both Ways, M/M, The World Is Bigger Than You Think, Tiger!Stiles, WereTigers, alpha pack, badass!Stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-09
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 00:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanfictionForYou/pseuds/FanfictionForYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles really shouldn't have been in the middle of the woods on the night of the full moon.  Then again, he thought only werewolves hunted on the full moon, not tigers.  Now he’ll have to deal with being something other than human.  That’s made even more difficult by an alpha tiger out there somewhere killing people and the alpha pack biding their time until the attack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was huge, and beautiful, and terrifying.  It was bigger than Peter had been in alpha form and Stiles wasn’t sure if tigers were natural that big and this one had just escaped from somewhere; or if it was a supernatural sort of tiger.  He probably shouldn’t have come out to the Hale house alone on a full moon to take pictures of the Alpha Pack’s symbol upon the door while everyone else was doing only God knows what only God knows where under Derek’s order.

“Nice kitty.”

Stiles slowly began inching backwards towards his jeep.  It was only a few yards away.

“That’s a nice kitty.  Just stay there while Stiles makes his escape.”

Its eyes began glowing red and Stiles instantly knew that this was not just some animal; but a were-tiger.

“Not that you’re a kitty or anything.  I’m sure you’re really attractive when you’re a human too.  Please don’t eat me.”

The tiger almost seemed like it was smiling.  Of course that meant that it had pulled its teeth back from pointy, sharp looking teeth that rivaled that of any wolf.

“I’m so dead.”

He turned quickly and began the mad dash towards his jeep.  Maybe he could make it.  His hand rested on the handle and he opened the door before beginning to pull himself in.  There was an intense pain in his leg and a sort of tugging that almost pulled him out of the jeep.  He hung on with both arms and kicked back at the tiger’s face.  It released him and he pulled himself into his vehicle before slamming and locking the door.  His window exploded inward and a massive paw entered, nearly taking off his head as he started the jeep and floored it in reverse.  He swung the jeep around at the last moment and began speeding out of the forest and towards safety.

His leg burned, except for where the blood dripped down and soaked his pants only to quickly cool in the chilly night air.  The only thing that kept him conscious was the wind blowing in through the shattered window and hitting his face.

He wasn’t sure if the tears streaming down his face were voluntary; or if they were caused by the breeze stinging them.

He didn’t care.  He just didn’t want to die.  His father needed him.  He couldn’t die.  It would kill his father.

What should he do?  Should he go to the hospital?  What would he say?  ‘Hey, I was bitten by a weretiger; can you give me a little help?’  They would get suspicious if the wound healed overnight.  That was…if he survived.  Should he go to Deaton?  No.  He remembered Scott telling him that Deaton was out of town to help with rescuing animals who had been displaced because of some huge storm down south.  And if he were to die from the bite; he didn’t want it to be in his own house where his father could find him.  God, no.  It would destroy his father to be the one to find him.

That left only one option.  He would go to Derek’s little hide away and crash in that crappy little train car.  Derek would either be there or return.  If Stiles was still alive; then Derek would know what to do.

***  
  
The Train Depot was empty.

Stiles had been forced to shuffle into the building and had slid down the stairs on his ass because his leg wouldn’t support enough weight for him to make it down any other way.

He pulled back one of the doors to the train car and pulled himself inside; using the train’s features to help him make his way towards a makeshift bed at one end.  He plopped down on the warn out mattress and blankets and removed his over shirt before ripping through the tears that the tiger’s teeth had caused in his jeans.  Stiles groaned when he finally saw the full extent of the damage.  He was pretty sure that he could see straight to the bone in some places.  Tigers had much bigger teeth than wolves.  Probably because they hunted alone in the wild.

“I’m so going to die.”

He shook his head slowly; trying to force away the thoughts of his father burying him beside his mother.  He would _not_ die.  He needed to be strong for his father.  He ripped up more of the leg of his pants before wrapping the over shirt tightly around the wound and tying it tightly.  When he was done; he lay back against the old mattress let darkness over take him.

 

***  
  
Derek, Isaac, Jackson, Erica, and Boyd looked down at the unmoving form of Stiles Stilinski.

“He smells ‘off’” Erica scrunched up her nose at the unfamiliar scent.

“He’s changing.”  Derek stepped closer and reached down to the blood soaked shirt wrapped around the teen’s leg.  Upon removing it; a half healed wound was revealed.  It looked old though the blood on the shirt was much fresher than the injury appeared.  Derek frowned at the size of the wound.  It was larger than an alpha wolf’s bite, and Stiles didn’t smell like he was becoming a wolf.

“He’s not becoming a Kanima is he?”  Jackson didn’t want to think of anyone becoming the sort of monster that he had been before Lydia had saved him.

“No.  As the Kanima you didn’t really have a scent.  Your scent was human and when you shifted there was no scent at all.  Stiles has a scent.”  Derek kneeled down beside the teen and rested a hand on his forehead.  He was burning up and his skin was slick with sweat.  Stiles was fighting the transformation.  He would live, but he wouldn’t win the fight.  The question was; what was Stiles becoming?

***  
  
He felt like a fresh raw hell.  His skin was covered in dried sweat and felt sticky.  Then there was the dried flakey blood covering his leg…a leg that no longer burned but held the memory as a deep ache.

Stiles Stilinski slowly sat up with his eyes still closed tightly.  When he opened his eyes; that would mean that it was all real.  He needed to open his eyes. 

Upon opening them he noticed that he wasn’t alone.  Derek was lying on the hard plastic bench seats while Erica, Boyd, and Isaac were lying on the bed with him; though far enough away that he hadn’t felt them there.  The shirt had been removed from his leg and though the skin was covered in rust colored flakes, it was unmarred.  Stiles reached down slowly and ran his fingers over the skin before catching the scent of fresh coffee and what might possibly be bagels and cream cheese.  The voices came next.

“What do I say to him?”

“I don’t know, McCall.  He’s your best friend; not mine.”

“Well yea, but you’re the one that was something other than a werewolf.  I don’t know what to say to him.”

“Neither do I.”

“I can hear you, you know.”

He had figured that the two were right outside of the train car when they had actually been on the ground floor rather than the basement where he and the other wolves resided.  He could hear them trudging down the stairs now, and noticed how the wolves beside him were stirring while Derek was lying there with open eyes.

Stiles pulled himself up and moved to sit on the bench seats across from Derek.  Derek shifted into a sitting position just as Jackson entered with a large bag of what smelled like warm bagels and Scott entered with two trays with what appeared to be coffee.  Jackson sat next to Derek while Scott sat next to him.  Isaac was the next to sit.  He looked exhausted as he took a coffee from Scott and sat down at Derek’s feet.  Erica and Boyd came to get their bagels and coffees but simply moved back to the bed.

Stiles stomach growled and Jackson handed over a hot bagel with cream cheese slathered inside.  Stiles gratefully bit into it and began chewing away.

“Stiles, what happened last night?”

Stiles silently washed down the bite of bagel with some hot coffee before looking up at Derek with sad eyes.  “I went out to your place to examine the mark that the Alpha Pack left.  There was this huge tiger with glowing eyes.  I was almost in the jeep when it grabbed my leg.  I got free and I got the hell out of there.  I couldn’t go to the hospital or Deaton and if I died I didn’t want my father to be the one to find me; so I came here.”

Derek’s eyes were huge.  “A tiger?”

“If the stripes and figure were anything to go by.  It was standing in the light from my headlights; so it was pretty easy to see.  It was huge though, bigger than a normal tiger.  I thought it might have escaped from some zoo or someone’s private collection until the eyes started to glow.”  After Stiles finished his explanation, the room grew silent as they ate their breakfast and drank their coffee.

No one wanted to acknowledge that things were about to be very different now that Stiles was no longer the token human.  Derek didn’t want to admit that he was terrified.  After all, tigers are very different from wolves.


	2. Chapter 2

Jackson had been acting strangely for a couple of months.  First he had broken up with Lydia which was completely out of character.  He became more distant after that.  Then had come the shock of Jackson being declared dead on the lacrosse field only to miraculously resurrect in the same night.  He had grown even more distant after that and spent more time with Isaac Lahey then he spent with him.  It was strange because Jackson had never shown the kid any interest before.

Danny was sick of it.  While everyone ‘loved’ him, no one was actually his friend…at least no one other than Jackson.  The two had been nearly attached at one another’s hips since the second grade.

Danny was breaking.  He had even nearly invited Stiles over to his place to play video games just to fill the void.

So, in his desperation; he did something that he had promised himself that he would never do again.  He used his skills to track Jackson’s phone.  It registered as being off somewhere in the woods before it moved out of range of a signal.  Still, it meant that Jackson was in the woods…in the middle of the night.

“What are you doing Jacks?”

If it was a party, then he knew that Jackson wouldn’t go without him; so why was he there?  He was sure as hell going to find out.

****  
  
Danny shone his flashlight through the darkness of the forest.  It barely did anything to break up the darkness.  Maybe he should call Jackson?  But then Jackson would be pissed that he had come looking for him, not to mention that Jackson’s phone probably didn’t have a signal.  Danny was pretty sure that his own phone was without one now that he had made it so far into the forest.

“This was not one of my better thought out plans.”

The roar of what he assumed was a mountain lion confirmed his statement.  He turned slowly, the light shining in the lion’s eyes.  Only it wasn’t a lion.  It was a tiger.  It was a massive tiger that seemed large enough to ride like a horse. 

“What steroids have they been feeding you?”

The tiger’s eyes began glowing red and Danny took a shocked step back.  Odd that it was the glowing eyes that caused it and not the roar or the simple arrival of the tiger.

“Okay, so maybe it’s something radioactive that they’re feeding you.”

The tiger took several steps closer and Danny continued walking backwards until finally tripping over an exposed root.  The tiger pounced, ripping into Danny’s side with its teeth.  When the tiger pulled away with Danny’s blood dripping down its face; it almost looked as if it was smirking.  But that could have just been a hallucination. 

****  
  
Danny woke up wet, and cold, and utterly alone in the middle of the forest.  His shirt was pasted to his stomach with dried blood.  Danny pulled up his shirt to see the wound only to see unmarred skin.  How was that possible?  He continued lying on the ground until the sound of someone’s footsteps caught his attention.  He sat up to see Chris Argent standing over him with a gun in his hands.

“Son, I think we need to have a talk.”

****

Driving in the car with Mr. Argent had been nerve wracking.  Silence filled the space and Danny couldn’t stop thinking about how there were guns in the back of the SUV.  Maybe the man would pull over onto the side of the road somewhere and shoot him.

He didn’t though, and soon Danny was entering the Argent home where Allison was just coming down stairs in her pajamas.

“Danny?”  It was clear that she was shocked that the boy was there.  They weren’t friends.  They only knew one another because Allison was friends with Lydia and Danny was friends with Jackson.  Danny watched as her eyes traveled to the dried blood stain across his front.  “Oh my god!  What happened!?”

“That’s what I brought him here to talk about.  Danny, why don’t you take a shower?  I’ll bring you some fresh clothes.  Allison, go make some coffee.”

Allison quickly hopped to her father’s orders and Danny thankfully followed the man to his room to gather some clean clothes before slipping into the bathroom and peeling away blood soaked and tattered clothes. 

He frowned as he looked in the mirror.  He almost looked more muscular than he had been before.  He hadn’t really put on any bulk; but everything was more defined than it had been before.  Perhaps it was just the effects of sleeping out in the woods in the middle of the night.

He was thankful for the hot water that poured down over his body and eased aches that he wasn’t aware that he had.  He was thankful for the clean boxers, sweat pants, and t-shirt that warmed a chill that he hadn’t realized had been seeping into his bones.

Things were silent when he finally sat down at the kitchen table with Allison and her father.  Allison had placed a steaming hot cup of coffee in front of him and he fixed it up the way he liked before taking a small sip.  He felt more alive than he had been that morning.

“What do you know about what has been going on with Jackson?”

Danny sighed at Chris’s question before finally shaking his head.  “Nothing.  I was hoping to catch him last night but then I was attacked by…” he shuddered.  “Why do you ask?”

“Son, you’re probably not going to believe what I’m about to tell you; but your friend isn’t human anymore.  He’s a werewolf.  Last night you were bitten by an alpha werewolf.  When an alpha bites a human, they either turn or they die.”

Danny shook his head furiously.  “No.”

“I’m sorry.  But come the next full moon, you’ll transform into a werewolf.”

“No.  No I won’t; because it wasn’t a wolf that attacked me.”

Both Chris and Allison looked confused.

“What was it?”

“It was a tiger.  It was massive.  Someone probably could have ridden on its back.  Its eyes started glowing red and when I tripped, it attacked.”

“Dad, what does that mean?”

Chris sat back slowly with a look of shock on his face.  “Honestly, I don’t know.”


End file.
